User blog:Midoryu/This Hoard of Mine - Picking My Roster
In order for ultimate hoarding, I needed to assemble my A Team and somehow tweak the survival conditions. Deciding on the environment was the easy part, since the custom scenarios page gave me just what I needed. I picked a bunch of Final Cut maps out of curiosity, lowered the intensity, duration and timeframe of winter, and dialed back intensity of the fighting all the way to schoolyard scuffle. For my A Team, I knew building materials would be hard to come by, but also that things would pick up fast once I got my farms going. Being able to produce high-value items from those farms consistently would allow me to make trades for more Components, Woods, and other crafting essentials, thereby feeding a positive feedback cycle. This meant I needed to settle on a materials-centric team: survivors who could save on materials, and survivors who could obtain more materials than anyone else. This meant characters like Pavle and Arica were out. By process of elimination then, I decided on Bruno, Marko, Katia, and Marin. Most of you can imagine why, but let me explain anyway. Bruno could save fuel and water for precious meals, on top of crafting Medications at half the cost. For non-renewable components, this reduction helps immensely. Marko was chosen over all others, as I needed my scavenger to also be the one to clear maps of obstacles in a timely manner. Pavle only fits the 'fast' part of that description, and Boris only fits...well, two more items in his backpack, but is otherwise not fast at all. I could have chosen Pavle and Boris as an alternative to Marko, but Marko is the best compromise out of both Pavle and Boris. Being able to clear a map of all hostilities and obstacles while carrying a decent amount of items back to the shelter, all in one night, is a job that doesn't need two people when just one can do both those tasks decently. In fact, some of you will say that since multiple trips are required anyway to clear out a map of items, I should just go with a Pavle/Boris combo instead of Marko. But swapping out one person (who does decently in day phase too) with two just eliminates available openings in an already limited roster. For that reason, choosing Marko leaves me with two other characters I can still recruit. I knew I needed Marin on my team for his resource discount when building items. For all the work that Marko would do carrying so many items back, I wanted to save as much of those items as I could. Marin would be the perfect solution to this, not only for saving resources when building but also when crafting. For a game heavy on crafting, his ability to leave out one or two pieces of material each time I create something adds up to big savings in the long run. The last decision took a little longer, but I firmly decided on Katia. Considering I would need to perform trades all throughout the game, Katia could negotiate nice sales for me the more high-value items I offer. In this way Katia has cleaned house on Franko for me more times than I could count, giving Marin more components to craft with and Bruno more ingredients to cook with. My plan on this playthrough is what I've always been playing - taking the path of least resistance. Any opportunities for conflict would cause me to expend considerable resources to fix, like stealing from pilfer piles, or murdering civilians. Since I wouldn't be doing any of that, characters like Zlata or even Cveta wouldn't need to be on the team. Roman would also be left out since the places I would need to murder bandits all have hiding spots that allow me to successfully backstab with my scavenger. Emilia's lack of inventory space also makes her unnecessary (how do you like the taste of your own heartless medicine, you ice queen?) With that thought, my team is assembled. But now that I've got everything set up, how was I going to get through this 60-day gameplay? Find out next blog post, where I discuss the process of grinding through the days and testing new maps. Category:Blog posts